Ronda Rousey talks ‘Expendables 3’ and female superheroes

Ronda Rousey, the UFC bantmanweight champion, is currently making her big screen debut in Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables 3, and recently made comments on her movie making experience, as well as her desire to see better female superheroes.

When asked about female action heroes, Rousey complained to USA Today about seeing similar archetypes in comic books, stating, “I’m tired of watching this thing where the woman’s superpower is dumbed down. In The Fantastic Four, the woman is the invisible one. In X-Men, [telekinetic] Jean Grey gets tired all the time. Wonder Woman is cool, but she has bulletproof bracelets, while Superman is a bulletproof dude. It’s like she has really cool accessories. I think about that a lot.”

According to the LatinPost, Rousey was not Stallone’s first choice for the film. Rather, the The Expendables screenwriter and star originally considered actresses Milla Jovovich and Gina Carano, before meeting Rousey and changing his mind.

“I wanted someone beautiful and tough, and in walks this girl,” Stallone noted. “Talk about a one-off.”

As she told the Philadelphia Daily News, Rousey appreciates the risk Stallone took in casting her, noting “There were much more high-profile women, better known names than me, and he was the one pushing for me and taking the risk. And it’s been my mission in life to prove him right.”

When asked to recall some strange events from the movie set, Rousey recalled one fight scene that required her to wear a tight red dress and 6-inch stiletto heals, despite the protests of the stunt coordinator. The heel soon snapped while Rousey was filming the fight, and Rousey soon had to find shorter heals to wear during her stunt.

Rousey told USA Today that she appreciates being both beautiful and tough, but noted that these two traits don’t exactly mesh well.

“I try not to look my best every day,” Rousey said. “If you are designered up every day, you cannot step it up. I’m all about flipping switches. I can go from jock to red carpet. It takes a little more to get glamorous than it does to get into killer mode. But I like to have that ace to pull out.”

Furthermore, she commented on the evolution of female respresentation in Hollywood, saying to the Philadelphia Daily News, “We’re entering an age of female empowerment. What’s happening in Hollywood is what’s happened in MMA. The reason women are popular in MMA is because people wanted to watch them. It took a while for people to wake up for that. In Hollywood, there is a similar void, waiting to be filled.”

As we reported, Rousey might be making an appearance in Fast and Furious 7, but her comments on female superheroes are interesting. We recently posted an OpEd piece about the merits of a She-Hulk movie. Could Rousey be the one to fill the shoes of the Jade Giantess?